#Popular hip hop songs 2021 free#

'Like she doing chores, yeah, she gon' vacuum me,' goes one line on 'HULU.' But when Pi'erre's saying it, it's almost always unintentionally hilarious. Typically, you wouldn't want a rapper with bars like Pi'erre Bourne's anywhere near a mic. Keem commands attention over triumphant horns on 'family ties,' spitting so exasperatedly, it's as if he's physically leaping over the trappings of his protégé status and rap royalty lineage: 'Avoiding the trends and duckin' the hoes / I'm duckin' the loonies that come with the shows / I'm grateful to Man-Man, he opened up doors / A bunk on the tour bus to come and compose.' Trading bars with Kendrick over three beat changes in four minutes, Keem passes the litmus test for compelling delivery and wordplay on a track that's since earned the rising talent his first Grammy nominations in the categories of best rap performance and best rap song, alongside a best new artist nod. While TikTok-era consumerism now trims songs to mere seconds or flips them for comedic relief, two-phone Keem comes through with so much strangely intriguing, flow-switching presence on each track that it challenges the audience to lean forward, do some extra research and listen closer. Decadently experimental compared to his breakout mixtape, DIE FOR MY BITCH, Keem's 2021 debut album The Melodic Blue finds the 21-year-old rapper officially staking his claim to define next-gen rap stardom. Luckily for Baby Keem, he's been laying the groundwork for this moment for years. When you're the baby cousin of Kendrick Lamar, arguably the best MC of his generation, and you're trying to make your own name in the rap game, the stakes of show and prove go up exponentially.

#Popular hip hop songs 2021 free#

Free Dem Boyz is the testament of an artist who began shaping his craft as a teenager in solitary confinement, delivered through strained vocals and a high-pitched, melodic flow so hypnotizing it almost belies his lived blues. And when your homies are still locked up and gone, what better way to cry freedom than dedicating a song ('Free Merey,' 'Judge Please,' 'Free Woo,' 'Free Skeet,' 'Free Me').

Over the next 49 minutes, the Detroit native holds listeners captive with the pain, pleas and spoils that could only come from a halflife of hustling and hard time served. Note: Albums designated with an asterisk have been previously covered in NPR Music's Best Music of 2021 series.Ĥ2 Dugg's fourth mixtape begins with the automated voice familiar to anyone who's been on the receiving end of a collect prison call. Or the worst, depending on your preference. Now that 'underground' is ambiguous and 'mainstream' is approaching meaninglessness, there's less reason to feel beholden to anything but choosing your own adventure. Now what we have here is a vast array of fill-in-the-blank: Death and defiance.

But it feels like hip-hop is finally unified in its sense of disunity. What we need to do is stick together as a people(!). Between the pandemic, the 'pocalypse and the unrelenting politics. Maybe we quit pretending that matters anymore.

Rap is a genre in name only, unbound by any agreed-upon convention or creative aesthetic. And that's just the stuff we pump and dump stateside. The map is more like a metaverse, a malleable collection of regional sounds, virtual alliances and divergent ideologies feeding off and fueling the globe. We don't talk about the sound of rap anymore, because there isn't one.